Archdiocese of Washington DC offers "Amoris Laetitia: Pastoral Plan"

This weekend, the Archdiocese of Washington DC released a longish document on their implementation of Amoris Laetitia.  Like the exhortation itself, this "Amoris Laetitia: Pastoral Plan" offers (mostly) a straightforward recapitulation of the Church's teaching about marriage, some good advice about strengthening marriage prep (both remote and proximate), and a call for conversion and stability.  We all know that our culture is increasingly anti-marriage, both in terms of more and more radical individualism and relativism, and in terms of failing to support marriage in ways both practical (tax laws, welfare state policies, etc) and theoretical (no fault divorce, education policy, court-driven custody rulings, etc).  Having a solid biblical, Catholic, Christ-centered vision of what marriage is, and of what the common problems in marriage stem from, and of how to recognize and respond to those issues in healthy and faithful ways, is critical, and I applaud anything that helps build up the culture of marriage and helps actual couples live their marriages well in Christ.

There are, however, two things about this pastoral plan that strike me as failing to aim at that goal from the outset.  This doesn't necessarily take away from the practical wisdom contained in the document, but it does invite us to think more deeply about our vision and how we communicate it.

The first is the problem of failing to articulate clearly the relationship of eros to agape.  The document states:

The desire to love and to be loved is a deep,

enduring part of our human experience. God

has written onto each human heart the desire for

self-giving love, reflected in the divine plan for

marriage and family. That plan offers a profound

“yes” to true joy in love. It gives us an invitation to

experience Christian hope in the love of God that

never ends. This "desire to love and be loved" is eros-love.  Eros is often where we start, not only in marriage but in many things we pursue.  Eros is not inherently wrong or evil; it is about choices we make at the level of the "appetitive soul."  If, however, our desire and ends remain only at this level, they tend to stagnate into selfishness and idolatry, addiction and neurosis.

As Pope Benedict taught so clearly in Deus Caritas Est, natural eros must always be purified by divine agape in order to pursue the good rather than the self.  Agape is that "self-giving love, reflected in the divine plan."  It is love that imitates Christ's perfect love from the Cross.  It therefore transcends the appetitive soul, through the action of a well-formed (not an eros-formed) conscience and divine grace, allowing the rational soul to perceive and choose the authentic good for others.

What is unclear in the above paragraph is precisely that agapic love is not "natural" to us as humans.  We must learn how to love this way.  While it's true in a sense that God has written the desire for agape into our hearts (as St. Augustine wrote, "Our heart is restless until it rests in you, O Lord"), we do not have natural means to engage this.  We require grace to transcend eros-love and be converted to love with Christ's agapic love.  To fail to distinguish this grace-for-conversion here leaves the entire pastoral plan resting on an insecure foundation.  Anyone who imagines that more eros (natural desire) can solve the problems created by unrefined eros (selfish desire) is bound to fail, but this is the conclusion being (inadvertently) invited here.

Sacramental marriage gives grace precisely to transform eros into agape.  No matter how kind and loving I am to my spouse and children, if I continue to treat them as objects of desire (i.e., they must fulfill me, they are in my life for my happiness), I am not responding to this sacramental grace.  Eros transformed into agape means I live my vocation to married life as Christ crucified - that everything I am and do is for them, rather than the reverse.  From eros fulfilled comes mere happiness; from agape fulfilling others comes joy and union with Christ.

Therefore, while it is certainly true that "That (divine) plan offers a profound 'yes' to true joy in love," it must also be stated that deviations from the divine plan offer an (at least implicit) 'no' to the same conversion, joy, and agape-love.  We must not conclude what the document leaves open to us (and what Amoris Laetitia, too, often seems to suggest), that deviations from the divine plan for marriage and family contain a partial 'yes' to God and grace.  This might be true, only if the deviations result entirely from ignorance and weakness.  When they result from a deliberate choice to pursue eros-love instead of agape-love (even when that choice is less than fully informed), they do not represent authentic modes of encountering Christ's grace, and they are therefore contrary to the divine plan.  Eliding this distinction does not serve anyone well.

The second problem risks being even more corrosive.  It suggests that the Church's doctrine is not itself useful or practical, and that lived experience is needed to understand, or interpret, or even correct that doctine.

Reflecting on the implementation of Amoris

Laetitia in the Archdiocese of Washington, we

begin first with the richness of the Church’s

perennial teaching on love, marriage, family,

faith and mercy.... Secondly, we need to remember that our task is

not complete if we only limit ourselves to faith

statements. The goal is the salvation of souls

and it is a far more complex effort than simply

restating Church doctrine. For this reason, it is

essential to recognize that our teaching is received

by individuals according to their own situation,

experience and life....
At one level, this distinction is not problematic.  I am not trying to suggest that lived experience is irrelevant to doctrine, or that the reception of doctrine is not fraught with difficulties stemming from our human weakness and falibility, or stemming from cultural presumptions at odds with the Gospel, etc.  Even given this, however, it is tendentious in the extreme to suggest that the Church's pastoral care has ever attempted to engage with actual situations merely by "restating doctrine," or that, say, St. John Paul II failed to appreciate the complexities presented to the Church by contemporary culture (see e.g. Familiaris Consortio or Veritatis Splendor, or for a different vocational context, Pastores Dabo Vobis).  Should we now discard the entire Code of Canon Law, beacuse it "limits us to faith statements?"  At this level, the dichotomy becomes a blatant lie, pitting "mercy" (which now means making excuses for deviations from the divine plan for marriage and family) against "doctrine" (which now means cruelly expecting people to be unrealistically perfect). 

If this is our vision of marriage, "our faith is vain," as St. Paul says, because this vision of marriage is indistinguishable from the world's - eros without agape (love with sacrifice, happiness without personal cost), inherently self-centered, and "mercifully" lacking any possible leverage to modify behavior which is actually inimical to marriage, to the dignity of persons, or to salvation. 

I don't actually believe that the Archdiocese of Washington is promoting this cultural vision of marriage.  But, by including these two ambiguities, it weakens the vision which it is trying to offer and sustain, of Christ's sacramental marriage.  And our culture has already weakened that vision enough; we don't need to weaken our presentation of it still futher.

Is the indissolubility of marriage a *dogmatic* teaching?

The Church has always taught that marriage, validly entered (i.e., with true and free consent of both spouses) and consummated, is indissoluble - that is, bluntly, "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder" (Mt 19:6, Mk 10:9).  This is true both of natural marriage (i.e., between unbaptized persons), and of sacramental marriage (i.e., between baptized persons).  A quick glance at, say, the index of Denzinger's or the footnotes of the Catechism of the Catholic Church will show how often this teaching has been repeated.

But, one might ask, is this perennial teaching doctrinal (could be divinely revealed, or is at least consistent with apostolic teaching and practice, yet possibly subject to revision), or dogmatic (divinely revealed in Scripture and Tradition, defined as clearly as possible/necessary with full authority, and not subject to revision as far as the definition goes)?

Doctrine and dogma are not opposed to each other, in the sense that the first is optional and the second not.  Both are to be received as fully as humanly possible, for living and believing with "the mind of Christ," and for not living "according to this age" (Rom 12:2, etc).  There's no difference of truth between them, but there is a difference of clarity and of finality.  Dogmatic teaching is the highest level of exercising the teaching authority of the Church (Magisterium); doctrinal teaching is the ordinary level of the same.

To asnwer the question posed, consider a small sample of points:

• The quote in the first paragraph, above, shows without ambiguity that the indissolubility of marriage is taught by Christ Himself, directly. 

• The 24th session of the Council of Trent (Nov, 1563) dealt with marriage, and its decrees and canons were accepted and promulgated by Pope Pius IV.  It certainly appears to be a formal, solemn, and intended-to-be-dogmatic definition of marriage, including its indissolubility.

• Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical Casti Connubi (1930), refers to that definition of Trent as a "solemn definition," and repeats the unchanging teaching of indissolubility with great clarity.

• The Second Vatican Council, in its sacred consititution Gaudium et Spes, repeats the same (e.g. #48, albeit without the same verbal markers of dogmatic intent; it does, however, cite Casti Connubi, which seems to imply dogmatic intent, given that document's clarity).

• The Catechism of the Catholic Church repeats the same again (e.g. #1639, 1640, etc), without ambiguity.  It cites the same biblical passage above, and GS #48.

Moreover, all these sources consistently present a clear and compelling theological reason why marriage ought to be indissoluble; namely, that God, in establishing the natural of marriage, does so on the pattern of the divine covenant.  This is a thoroughly Scriptural and Traditional claim (e.g., Jer 31:31, Dan 2:44, Eph 5, etc.).  Since God's covenant is indissoluble, marriage must also be.  To claim that marriage is soluble is to claim that the divine covenant is also soluble, that God could change His mind about the promises of salvation; or in other words, that Christ died, but not for our sins (!).  If marriage has any spiritual reality at all, it must, then, necessarily be indissoluble.

Given all this sort of evidence, it seems to me very difficult to claim that the indissolubility of marriage is merely a doctrinal, but not a dogmatic, teaching. 

Bishop Olmstead (Phoenix) - "Into the Breach"

Yesterday, Bishop Olmstead published an apostolic exhortation to men to step "into the breach" of faith and spiritual life.  His exhortation is excellent!  Please read it.  It's entirely relevant to deacons and those of you in deacon formation, too.  The main point is about a revival of Catholic manliness by:

• a rejection of postmodern culture's confusion about anthropology and gender, and an embrace of traditional and Biblical norms for masculinity (i.e., strength with gentleness, justice with mercy, wisdom and humility, basic courtesy, boldness to face down evil and to lead to the good, protection of others, especially those who can't protect themselves, the Biblical "widows and orphans" - in a word, chivalry),
• chastity,
• fidelity for fathers and husbands (and a deliberate promotion of the necessary norms for being good fathers and husbands, over against the self-indulgent decadence of the culture and the scourge of divorce),
• return to the Mass and the sacrament of Confession,
• prayer and personal devotion.

I'm hoping that the website will continue to be a good source for informationa and resources.  Click through to see a short video associated with the exhortation.

Video of May 3 Ordination

Courtesy of M.V., good friend and erstwhile instructor of this cohort, here is a video of our ordination Mass for our ten new deacons, on May 3.  The camera was hand-held and she was unable to leave the pew for better angles, but the quality is still very good overall. 

Part 1 is the procession up to the beginning of the homily:


Part 2 has the homily and part of the ordination rite:


Part 3 starts with the vesting of the new deacons:


Part 4 has some of the Communion Rite:


Part 5 starts with the Postcommunion Prayer:


Thanks to MV for sharing these with us and to the HS for causing the day to happen!  Ad multos annos!

"For the liberty and exaltation of Holy Mother Church" - updated

Is any kind of cooperation between Church and State possible in the current political climate? If yes, what kinds, with what limits? If no, what does that imply about the apostolic ministry, and our share in it as deacons?

Msgr. Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington has an excellent post, summarizing the "real and subtle" attacks on the Church in the US. In addition to the obvious coercions of court-imposed rules in the abortion issue and so-called same-sex marriage, etc., he notes items such as the (still pending) HHS regulations about health insurance requirements, denials of grants solely on the basis of Catholic pro-life doctrine, increasing government intrusion in Church affairs (e.g. as attempted in Connecticut in 2009), and so forth. He doesn't mention the Obama administration's arguments before the Supreme Court earlier this year, in the case of a Lutheran teacher who was fired from her position, which were blatantly contrary to the First Amendment. Nor does he mention the current suits and counter-suits at Belmont Abbey College, nor the ruling against California's Catholic Charities a few years ago, which also have to do with health insurance regulation. The list could be extended quite a bit further.

He concludes his article this way:

"At the beginning of a New Year, please take these threats seriously. The extreme secularists presume they can simply wear us down by their repeated and numerous legal maneuverings. And, frankly, they may be right, unless people like you and me are vigilant and unflinching in supporting the Church as she battles these attacks.

And don’t be too sanguine about how we should be willing to endure persecution. We should, but that does not mean we simply surrender our Constitutional rights at the door and let secularists, and proponents of the cultural revolution isolate us. We have every Constitutional right that any American does and we cannot simply let the Church be silenced by either ignoring the problem or minimizing it."

Msgr. Pope is proposing an engagement of culture by the Church. The first goal is to resist the false claim that the Church has no role in public life, which has been dubbed the "naked public square." The second goal is to win certain "natural frontiers" (namely, faith and morals, and their intersection with public policy) within which the Church can act publicly, without having to defend that role repeatedly and minutely. The third (and unspoken in this article) goal is, of course, the conversion of culture.

In the same vein as this engagement, we have something like Archbishop Neinstedt's leadership on the proposed constitutional amendment in Minnesota in defense of marriage. This is a good particular instance of the USCCB's priority for the defense of marriage and the building up of a pro-family culture, which has been so badly eroded over the past three to four generations. Clearly, public policy about marriage and family is not immediately subject to the Church's Magisterium, the divine authority to teach on all matters of faith and morals. But equally clearly, public policy about marriage and family has profound, long-lasting, and far-reaching implications for just about every other area of public life, from education to the social welfare net to economy and taxation. The Church does not dictate public policy, but we should absolutely want to influence and shape public policy. Therefore, one would be correct to conclude that this sort of engagement is crucial to the Church's role in public life, and therefore worth fighting for the right to do so (clearly a right in both the natural law and the Constitution, but as Msgr. Pope has shown, one which is denied by the current administration and its secular ideology).

But engagement is not the whole of our Tradition. We also have the tradition of what might be called isolation: Catholic institutions separate from the public ones, self-funded and therefore autonomous to a far greater degree. At one time this was true of all our Catholic schools and hospitals, though it isn't universally true in these areas today. At one time, this logic was so clear and accepted in the Church that we organized all kinds of separate Catholic groups in public life: even things as apparently insular as Catholic actors' guilds, for example. (Given the debauchery of "Hollywood culture," maybe this separatism shouldn't be deemed anachronistic!) The Catholic Charities in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is holding to this logic. In light of what has happened in Massachusetts and Illinois, this is perhaps not a bad idea at all. But is it an engagement of the culture; and if so, how does it engage?

I would argue that this sort of separatism is a necessary component of the engagement of culture. Engagement requires clarity about our goals. This means Catholic identity, and Catholicity in general, must be clearly upheld in practice. Separate Catholic institutions do that. So too does the "separateness," the consecration, of clergy, of religious, and of families. From that clarity of identity comes clarity of mission. Without that clarity of identity, mission is inevitably compromised by ideologies.

O God, our refuge and our strength, look down in mercy on Thy people who cry to Thee, and by the intercession of the glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of St. Joseph her Spouse, of Thy blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and of all the saints, in mercy and goodness hear our prayers for the conversion of sinners, and for the liberty and exaltation of our holy Mother the Church. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Update: Two more views on this same topic: Pope Benedict XVI's address to the diplomats credentialed to the Vatican, and Bishop Jenky (Peoria, IL) in his annual Festival Letter.

"Deacon Reader" Summer Reading 6

Chapter 3 - The Deacon and Gaudium et Spes (Fr. McPartlan)

This essay argues that "We must try... to relate the diaconate... to some of the major principles of Vatican II's teaching," and especially to the main themes of the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes.

The first major principle he notes, in the second paragraph and following, is Church unity (my p. 57). Charity, he notes, serves unity, as does the authentic kerygma of the Good News, along with reaching out to the marginalized (probably envisioning both ecumenism and social justice) and defending the rights of the weak. Then he has a long section on the relationship between Church and the world, and the relevance of this to the diaconate (which we'll come back to in a moment), before listing other major principles at the end (by way of demonstrating what he's been trying to say). The other major principles he notes (my p. 73) are (2) the Church as servant, (3) the central role of the College of Bishops (and the implications of this for the meaning of the Sacrament of Holy Orders), (4) that "good liturgy animates the apostolate [of the laity]," and (5) solidarity.

Now, as principles for the Church, these five are quite solid. The challenge of the essay is in the part about the relationship of Church and world.

He wants to argue that the Church and the world should be united in the manner of "seamlessness" (p. 65, beginning of the section, "Deacons and the New Ecclesial Embrace of the World"). He says, "Everything she [the Church] does is for the salvation of the world, of which she is thoroughly a part" (p. 60, just after the long quote from JP2 at the Assisi ecumenical meeting in 2002).

Now, there's an obviously sense in which this is true: the Church has never not understood herself to be both "in the world" and "for the world." Even the most isolated hermit serves the world by praying and sacrificing. And every attempt to deny that Christ established the Church for the whole world (e.g., Manicheaism in the 4th-5th c., Waldensians et al in the 12th c., Jansenism in the 18th-19th c.) has been roundly condemned.

But at the same time, the Church has also always understood that she is supposed to be "not of the world." The world is fallen. Original sin exists. Personal sin exists. This is the universal and unchanging basis for admitting that we need a Savior. By baptism, we die in a very real sense, in the order of fallen nature, so that we can live the new life of Christ. The life of struggling to carry the Cross is, at the most basic, completely different from the life of not struggling to carry the Cross.

It's not clear in this essay that this "seamlessness" argument includes both of these terms. The "in and for the world" part predominates; the conversion part is hard to see. At best, it's implicitly present in what is preached, and how that preaching might be received by the modern world.

In the section on the "Deacon and the New Ecclesial Embrace..." (my p. 65ff), he states that deacons should be signs of this seamless solidarity; present in the world, somewhat like what the worker-priest movement tried in the 1950's; a kind of link between altar and world (he doesn't mention that both priests and laity do this also, each in different ways from deacons); a reader of the signs of the times and an applier of the Gospel to them.

If he means all this as "in and for the world" only, without the expectation of conversion to Christ, then all this is pretty obviously flawed. Without the demand of conversion, solidarity degenerates into mere niceness; presence gives way to autonomy and moral relativism; the Eucharistic altar stands well apart from the world; and the signs of the times can never say anything truly human, but only fads and whims as culture drifts.

I have a hard time thinking this is what Fr. McPartlan really meant. So, we must read in explicitly the need for conversion. Then I think his argument is pretty good, although still imprecise. With the demand for conversion to Christ (even if that demand is not made explicit in every act), then these things make more sense. Solidarity with my neighbor is a way of being in Christ, together; presence brings the grace of Christ into a situation; the Eucharistic altar calls everyone to truth and beauty; and the signs of the times can speak essential human needs, where Mercy is most hungered for.

But, I still note that this is only descriptive, not definitive. I argue that the set of {solidarity, presence, linking to the altar, and responding to true need} is what deacons do, not because of ordination, but because of baptism. These four aspects are general modes of discipleship. We have to dig deeper if we want to see in what particular, unique manner they are modes of diaconal ministry.

For example, in his opening list of principles, he notes the special role of the College of Bishops, and therefore of ordained ministry, and therefore (one infers) of the particular share in the apostolic ministry each of the lower grades (priests and deacons) receives. So how does the sacred power to proclaim the Gospel by word and action, in liturgy and in ministry, give a unique shape or character to the deacon's particular discipleship? He says it should be "symbolic of their [deacons'] relationships and activities in the world at large" (my p. 76, third-to-last paragraph). But none of our sacraments are mere symbols; so, symbolic in what sacramental sense?

Likewise, the principle that good liturgy animates the apostolate clearly means something different for deacons than for priests, since our liturgical roles are distinct. So, what exactly does it mean for deacons? How can we, in our liturgical ministry, be in solidarity with the laity, or with the whole world; or be present to them; or link them to the Eucharist; or (help) respond to their actual needs for grace and mercy?

"Deacon Reader" Summer Reading 5

Fr. Enright finishes up his survey of the history of the diaconate with a very quick look at the medieval period (roughly, 700 to 1500), the Council of Trent, and Vatican II.

In keeping with what we've already said about continuity in the most basic idea of what the diaconate is sacramentally, note especially the first quote from St. Isidore of Seville and the last quote from St. Thomas (p. 20 and 22 in my edition). Even though the diaconate was more and more treated as "transitional" throughout this period, we do know that it (and the minor orders) were flourishing. St. Isidore gives it a very significant degree of respect, and St. Thomas's theology (although shaped by his very heavy concentration on the priesthood and confection of the Eucharist, typical of the time) articulates a clear "sacred power" to proclaim the Gospel, both liturgically and, I think, ministerially, which the handing over of the Book of the Gospels in the ordination rite signifies. Nothing here seems to indicate an order in decline or being marginalized in the Church, despite the relative lack of "permanent" deacons.

The Council of Trent considered, but did not in the end enact, a revival of the permanency of the diaconate. It stated unambiguously that deacons belong to major orders, but it did not give any clear definition of the deacon's sacramental identity.

In the 400 years between Trent and Vatican II, something significant changed, though, and this article (and the next, really), don't manage to identify that change. I don't know the reasons why, but two things happened: (1) the minor orders essentially disappeared from parish life; and (2) the norms of celibacy became much stricter. Those two things are probably related, in fact, but I haven't seen any research into how. What this means, though, is that the context of the "renewal" of the diaconate in the 20th century was significantly different from the context in the 16th or 17th century, in the wake of Trent.

One way to think about the renewed diaconate is that all the functions of the minor orders, which (at least in one theory) were unpacked out of the original diaconate, have now been repacked back into it. In a sense, it's useful to think this way, because we now look at deacons much the same way the medieval Church looked at the minor orders: ordained men, pillars of the Church as it were, mostly married, mostly not employed by the Church, taking on clear, necessary, but subordinate roles in liturgy, parish life (catechist, sacristan, etc etc), and witness in the world. (Theologically, of course, there's a big difference between major and minor orders, which we're skipping over here.)

The cost of thinking in these terms is usually the loss of clarity about the diaconate's "necessity" (as Fr. Enright puts it in his conclusion, last paragraph, on my p. 26), in three senses. First, (also because of our cultural attitudes,) we lose the sense that something is missing when Mass is celebrated without a deacon ("low" Mass, though we don't call it that anymore). Second, we lose the importance of the transitional diaconate - which, as we noted before, doesn't actually seem to be a "decline" of the diaconate in the patristic or medieval Church - even to the extent of suggesting doing away with it. (One of my biggest beefs with Deacon Ditewig is his foolish promoting of this very bad idea.) Third, we lose clarity about the deacon's "sacred power" of proclaiming the Gospel in liturgy and in ministry, and therefore about the deacon's most basic identity and share of the apostolic mission.

If we can hold on to the attractiveness of this vocation (in terms of the loose parallel to the way the minor orders used to flourish?) and at the same time hold on to a robust theological precision about identity, sacred power, and double usage (permanent and transitional), then I think we will be close to embracing the "necessity... to the Church and her mission" of the diaconate that Fr. Enright lauds in his conclusion. Which is devoutly to be hoped, prayed, and worked for.

Norms of justice

In today's Office of Readings, we find this passage from Wisdom (expressing the rejection of God by the unrepentant):

But let our strength be our norm of justice;
for weakness proves itself useless.
Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us;
he sets himself against our doings,
reproaches us for transgressions of the law
and charges us with violations of our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God
and styles himself a child of the Lord.
To us he is the censure of our thoughts;
merely to see him is a hardship for us,
because his life is not like other men's,
and different are his ways.

The just one in this passage is of course Jesus Christ; but since we belong to Him, what is said about Him should also be said in some sense about us. Our lives should be different enough from the lives of those who don't belong to Him to be noticed, to be a reproach - a positive witness to His love and truth, and an implicit invitation to conversion. If strength is the norm of justice for those who don't belong to Christ, how can it be the norm of justice for those of us who do? Of course, it isn't supposed to be. The whole paradox of the Cross, of the truth that "when I am weak, then I am strong," is supposed to be our norm.

I think this applies to our witness as families in a special way. To be weak as a family doesn't mean to be a doormat; it means to be humble in our submission to the demands of that vocation. As husbands, in particular, those of us who are or hope to become deacons are called to subordinate our own needs to those of our wife and children; and to the extent that is reasonably and prudently compatible with that priority, to subordinate our needs to those of our neighbor, also. In other words, we are to choose to love, to "prefer the good of the other, even to our own good." This is how we show that Christ is indeed our Lord; and that marriage is indeed a very special and fundamental form of service, not something that feeds and strengthens our baser appetites in "socially acceptable" ways.

When Joe asked us this past Saturday to consider the point of view of those who support the legality of SSM, I jumped on that idea -- the idea, I say, not the people who hold it -- as hard and as strong as I could. I hope it was clear from the discussion and what followed, that I did this, not because I don't want to consider the idea, but because I have considered it, and I know and believe that this idea requires precisely that rejection of God expounded in this passage of Wisdom. I grant that many, perhaps even most or all, of the people who support the legality of SSM do not see this implication, that they don't intend to reject God, and that their desire for justice is real. But nevertheless these ideas are incompatible with each other.

So, simply in respect of our vocation as husbands and fathers, not to mention our vocation as deacons, we cannot afford the confusion -- clear to the eyes of faith, if not to worldly eyes -- of mistaking our strength, our own idolatrous norm of justice, for God's will. It is always a mistake to believe that weakness proves itself useless, for this is fundamentally a rejection of the Cross. And our weakness here needs to be a daily, joyful commitment, in prayer and action, that "not my will, but Yours, be done."

Inquiry Night Schedule (updated)

Here is the schedule for Inquiry Nights this year:

Tuesday, Oct 12, 7:00 pm, St. Joseph's, Milford
Thursday, Oct 14, 7:00 pm, Cathedral, Sioux City
Tuesday, Oct 19, 6:30 pm, Holy Trinity, Fort Dodge (Corpus Christi center)
Tuesday, Oct 26, 7:00 pm, St. Lawrence, Carroll

Update: Holy Spirit parish's "family room" on the 26th, not at St. Lawrence.

My thanks to all the pastors who have agreed to host these inquiry meetings. Any of our current deacons, candidates, or aspirants, including wives, are also welcome to come to one or more of these meetings and help answer questions, talk about their own experience in formation and as a deacon (or wife), and so forth.

Most importantly, if you know good men who have expressed some interest in the diaconate, or who you think may be called to a diaconal vocation by God, give them the information and encourage them to attend one of these meetings. And as always, they can contact me at any time.

3 September - Pope Saint Gregory the Great

On loving God in the active life – wisdom from Pope Saint Gregory the Great

Before he was chosen as Pope, Saint Gregory was a monk (under the Rule of Saint Benedict), and a deacon (yea, go deacons!!). He had a monastic contemplative life, based around his monastic schedule – Liturgy of the Hours, lectio divina, meditative prayer, and silence of tongue, mind, and opinion. When he became Pope, he complained bitterly about the loss of this schedule and this spiritual routine. He feared greatly the damage this lack of contemplation could do to him, and through him to the souls in his care.

But in the course of his pontificate, Saint Gregory came to understand another path of contemplative prayer, suitable for those in the active life. Here in very schematic form are the six steps he sketches out on this path.

1. The pursuit of natural virtue in one’s duties in the world. The four cardinal virtues – prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance – are part of the natural law, and we know about them, and what makes them good, from our ordinary experience in this world. No one in the active life can deny that to pursue these virtues is a good thing in itself. Those who strive for these virtues are “better” people, and they are more admired and respected, in general. The more systematic and self-disciplined the pursuit of these virtues, the more admirable the person.

2. Humility. Saint Benedict says that humility is the root of all virtue, and the self-disciplined pursuit of even natural virtues tends to humility. But humility creates in us the capacity to love the other more than one loves oneself. Humility perfects natural virtue, and, if we’re looking in that direction, leads us to Christ.

3. Obedience. Obedience is another fruit of growing in natural virtue. “Obedience” here doesn’t mean taking orders from someone else; it means choosing to put the good of someone else reasonably high in our priorities. For example, husbands and wives practice this obedience to each other daily, when they choose to do household chores out of love. Employees practice this obedience when they choose honesty rather than lying or stealing from their employer. And so forth. In a larger sense, what we’re doing when we obey in this way is choosing the good more effectively. We’re submitting ourselves more wholeheartedly to the demands of that vision of the good, through the practice of natural virtue perfected in humility. Already at this level there is a degree of joy which draws us further along this active path. As the saying goes, "Virtue is its own reward."

4. Unity and peace, then, are the practical fruit of natural virtue, humility, and obedience in one’s state in life. It is the lack or the imperfection of virtue that separates us from each other, and that breaks our peace with each other, for example in anger. But, looked at from the other direction, unity and peace are also the means of encountering the true unity and true peace of the Mystical Body of Christ. That is, natural unity and peace are the historical expression of supernatural unity and peace in Christ. So again, natural virtue leads us to Christ. The more our growth in virtue orients us to the good of others, the harder it is to maintain a vision of the good separate from the good which is Christ.

5. In the Church, the submission of one’s judgment to the reign of Christ is purified. The fruit of unity and peace in the Church, the mystical Body, is an encounter with Christ the Head. We therefore begin to apply the humility and obedience to the Church, also. We come to love God’s providential will in the Church. We submit ourselves more and more to her wisdom in doctrine; we look more and more to her moral guidance in daily matters; we find increasing happiness in fulfilling her precepts. The joy of loving Christ, and of loving like Christ, begins to make our attraction to merely created goods less compelling.

6. Loving the Church, we can finally envision love for God Himself as perfect Love. We find, in the depths of our most basic motive for meeting our duties in the active life, the eye of our heart gazing upon God’s divinity. To put it simply, we live the divine praises.


The attractive object of contemplation for those in the active life -- what draws our attention and our attraction out of the created order and toward God -- is, then, the providential will of God. By learning to love the will of God, starting at the most general level of natural virtue and working “up” to the most personal level of my vocation and what God wills me to do, right now, today, in order to serve in that vocation, we come to love God Himself – which is, of course, what we are created and baptized for.

I stress that following this path doesn’t happen automatically. We still sin. Even without sinning, we choose contradictory and retrograde goods every day. God doesn’t deprive us of the good of our will. We must choose to love him, at every moment. But what this path showed to Saint Gregory was that he need not regret leaving the monastery. It is possible to be a perfect imitator of the perfect love of Christ, even in the midst of active life in the world – in the world, that is, but not of the world. This path, finally, is one of interior conversion -- a different path of interior conversion than the monastic vocation, but that’s precisely why we who aren’t monks need it.